Electronic components, such as integrated circuits (ICs), are typically assembled into packages by physically and electrically coupling them to a substrate, such as a printed circuit board (PCB), to form an “electronic assembly”. The “electronic assembly” can be part of an “electronic system”. An “electronic system” is broadly defined herein as any product comprising an “electronic assembly”. Examples of electronic systems include computers (e.g., desktop, laptop, hand-held, server, Internet appliance, etc.), wireless communications devices (e.g., cellular phones, cordless phones, pagers, etc.), computer-related peripherals (e.g., printers, scanners, monitors, etc.), entertainment devices (e.g., televisions, radios, stereos, tape and compact disc players, video cassette recorders, MP3 (Motion Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer 3) players, etc.), and the like.
In the field of electronic systems there is an incessant competitive pressure among manufacturers to drive the performance of their equipment up while driving down production costs. This is particularly true regarding the packaging of ICs on substrates, where each new generation of packaging must provide increased performance, particularly in terms of an increased number of components and higher clock frequencies, while generally being smaller or more compact in size.
As the internal circuitry of ICs, such as processors, operates at higher and higher clock frequencies, and as ICs operate at higher and higher power levels, the amount of heat generated by such ICs can increase their operating temperature to unacceptable levels, degrading their performance or even causing catastrophic failure. Thus it becomes increasingly important to adequately dissipate heat from IC environrments, including IC packages.
For this reason, electronic equipment often contains heat dissipation equipment to cool high-performance ICs. One known type of heat dissipation equipment includes an impinging fan mounted atop a heat sink. The heat sink comprises a plurality of radial fins or rods formed of a heat-conductive material such as copper or aluminum formed around a core. The bottom surface of the core is in thermal contact with the IC to conduct heat from the IC to ambient air. The fan moves air over the fins or rods to enhance the cooling capacity of the heat dissipation equipment. However, with high-performance ICs consuming ever greater amounts of power and accordingly producing greater amounts of heat, heat dissipation equipment must have higher heat dissipation capability than that heretofore obtained.
In order to offer higher capacity heat transfer, new heat dissipation equipment must be more efficient. It is difficult for air-cooled heat sinks to grow in size, because equipment manufacturers are under tremendous competitive pressure to maintain or diminish the size of their equipment packages, all the while filling them with more and more components. Thus, competitive heat dissipation equipment must be relatively compact in size and must perform at levels sufficient to prevent high-performance components from exceeding their operational heat specifications.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a significant need in the art for apparatus and methods for packaging high-performance electronic components in an electronic assembly that minimize heat dissipation problems.